


Man, Traveling Sure Takes It Out of You

by AndyAO3



Series: Angry Marshmallows and Sad Robots [3]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: Disabled Lone Wanderer, F/M, M/M, Sad Robots, Some Humor, lots of profanity, not a happy fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-22
Updated: 2015-10-22
Packaged: 2018-04-27 15:33:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5054197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndyAO3/pseuds/AndyAO3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The marshmallow finds a reason to care.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. with your spirit, the heavens...

**Author's Note:**

> HEYA FOLKS. I JUST WHIPPED THIS UP IN THE PAST COUPLE OF DAYS AND I AM MY OWN PROOFREADER ON IT.
> 
> I hope I haven't made too many errors. Wheeeeeeeeee

A month out in the wastes and Ted had already begun to tentatively associate Megaton with the word _home_. Tentatively.

Shit, he missed Amata.

That wasn't all, either. He even kinda missed Butch and his gang (Paul definitely, although Wally was a maybe). Susie probably had a breakdown once she found out about her dad, but Ted wouldn't put it past her to be a little bit relieved; her dad was kind of a douchebag, and she'd probably realize the guy deserved it if Amata took the time to tell her what happened. And Freddy, shit. How was he getting on now that the Vault didn't have a doctor anymore? How would he get his meds?

Well, at least Moira Brown liked him. Moira with her dark red hair and her face smudged with dirt, Moira with her bubbly delight whenever he helped her out. She helped him get set up with medication, the first couple of weeks out. He'd run out after just four days, and she'd taken the time to synthesize something new for him. In return, he fixed her computer terminal and agreed to help with her Wasteland Survival Guide project. It wasn't like he could do much else when he had to pay constant attention to his stress levels.

By the time a month had passed, he'd gotten used to her hugging him whenever she saw him. It seemed to be a Moira thing (although she did it more often after he'd had to get rid of Dogmeat, he noticed). Hadn't gotten quite as used to having his face smashed into her tits, but for that to stop happening he'd have to spontaneously grow another couple of inches. Besides, Amata had done the same thing.

He really needed to stop thinking about Amata.

Anyway, it was about a month out that he found a holotape on Moira's front desk one afternoon when he was coming in to get his laser pistol fixed up. Now it'd be cliche to say that he didn't know just how important that holotape would turn out to be, but...

"Teddy!" Moira squealed when she saw him, taking the stairs leading down from her loft two at a time. "Come right in, I'll be there in a minute."

"Alright," he replied with a shrug, watching her dart into one of her shop's many back rooms.

There was some shuffling as Moira continued, "I was just going to get started with my next chapter, and I got to thinking: what about robotics? It's such an under-utilized thing these days."

Ted hummed to acknowledge her, taking the occasional glance at that holotape. "And just what was it that got you started on that? Luke's Gutsy go on the fritz again?"

Moira poked her head out from a doorway to purse her lips at him. "I'm telling you, it didn't. Someone really did break in that time!"

"Mmhm. Sure." He smirked at her like he didn't believe her; he wasn't about to say that he'd been the one to break in and startle the Gutsy. So what? He'd been bored, and breaking into things was a traditional Vault boredom remedy. "Anything you need me to do?"

"I was thinking about how neat it would be if someone could get into the RobCo facility - you know, the one that's down south a ways - and do a little research for me. Getting into the computers, working out how to get into the mainframe." She scratched idly at a dirt smudge on her cheek, then shrugged and popped back out of sight. "If the robots could be reprogrammed, or at least have their friend-or-foe identification recalibrated--"

"So basically a How-To on making a robot do what you want it to do?"

"Right, exactly!" Moira came back out moments later with a cardboard box in her hands, overflowing to the brim with scrapped electronics. "There's so many robots out there just gathering dust. Why not put them to use?"

Ted chewed his lip thoughtfully. Shit. That was a flippant attitude to take, wasn't it? Yeah, he had Wadsworth, but he didn't ask for a Handy at all. It came with the house when he turned off the bomb. "Listen, Moira--"

"Hm?" The mechanic turned, and the box turned with her. One corner of it came close enough to her front desk to put several of the things on it dangerously close to smashing to the floor, including a half-full coffee mug; the holotape was the only thing that actually fell, and Ted caught that before it could hit the floor.

"I may know a thing or two about robots," he said. "Mind if I take over this chapter?"

"Oh, would you?" Her eyes lit up and she beamed at him. "That would be wonderful!"

He smiled back. "Sure. It'll give me something to take my mind off what happened with Dogmeat, y'know?"

Moira immediately softened at that. "Oh, _sweetie_ ," she cooed, before giving Ted a face full of boob-hug.

Well. She was nothing if not predictable.

"You're more than welcome to the robotics chapter if you want it, Teddy," she said after she pulled away. "And if you need anything - _anything!_ \- you just go ahead and let me know, okay?"

"Yes, ma'am," he told her, letting some of his relief show through even if it wasn't for the same reasons she might think of. She could think whatever she wanted, so long as she wasn't the one to write the how-to chapter on dealing with robots. She didn't know the first thing about how they operated. Not really. And just telling people how to reprogram them without prefacing it with something about ethics just didn't sit well with him at all.

He didn't realize until after he left her shop that he hadn't given her back the holotape he'd picked up. Nor had he gotten his laser pistol fixed.

Eh, he could always come back tomorrow.

\---

By midnight that night, he knew what prompted Moira to come up with the robotics idea. And goddamn, he couldn't sleep a wink. That holotape, man. Holy shit.

( _You’ve heard those rumors about androids? You know, those synthetic men they supposedly make up north in the Commonwealth? Well, a friend of a friend knows a guy that met one! No really, it’s true! He’s running away from his masters. Word is he’s looking for a doctor to do some kind of surgery, and a computer programmer of some kind. Can you believe that? Let me know if you hear something._ )

It had to be a hoax. Had to be. Androids? Human robots? Nah, it couldn't be a thing. Not after the end of the world.

And yet--

He couldn't keep his mind from racing well into the night. Androids! Real, honest-to-God androids! He just had to look into that shit. It'd be wrong not to. As a man of science, he was morally obligated to see if there was any truth to the rumor. Yes. Absolutely. He was not driven in any way by the fact that he'd been reading books and watching old holovids about robots since he was a kid, boring his dad and Amata and Jonas to tears with what Butch called "nerding out" (although it hadn't escaped him that Butch had been one of the few who would listen to said rambling).

Nope. Definitely not that. Not at all. Okay, kinda. His dad would say he was romanticizing, but fuck him. Ted did not romanticize things. Well, alright, maybe he did just a little bit. But c'mon, _androids!_ Who wouldn't be excited? This shit was straight out of an Asimov novel!

Ted rode on that high through dinner, and it wasn't until he actually sat down to his desk to write Moira's chapter-thing out that his excitement took a sudden nosedive.

Running away from his masters, huh?

Not that Ted had ever fostered any kind of illusions about robots being free agents. Generally, they weren't. The few stories where they were, they got treated like pariahs or monsters; hunting them down was written as justifiable. And whenever a robot wanted freedom - _Bicentennial Man_ came to mind for Ted - the humans in the story thought it was absurd. Impossible. Pointless. (Why ask for freedom when you're treated well? Silly robot, it's so much harder to be free. Take comfort in the ease with which you live and go fetch me a drink.)

Asimov's stories at least portrayed robots as good - as did Bradbury's, generally - and those had been the ones Ted had taken to heart. Because a robot was made as an extension of will of the person who programmed it. To him, robots were inherently innocent. They only hurt people if someone made them hurt people. They only ruled if someone made them rule. They were like humanity's children.

And if they didn't act like how a child was supposed to act (listen when adults are talking, speak only when spoken to, _because I said so_ ) it was always seen as the fault of the robot and not the fault of the people who ever thought that was a good fucking idea to begin with. Kind of like how people tended to treat, say, the sickly basket-case kid who had aspirations of being something other than just a sickly basket-case kid.

Yeah, Ted liked to think that he could understand where a robot wanting freedom might be coming from.

He didn't get to sleep that night until the sun was almost up. By then, he'd come up with a completely different reason to go looking for that android rumor the holotape talked about. Maybe it was fake. If so, he could live with that. But if it was real--

Shit. He couldn't just let this one go.

\---

Another month went by before he even realized it. By then, Ted had been all over. He'd faced down muties and raiders and ghouls and slavers. He'd gotten a chick out in Girdershade a whole fridge full of Quantum. He'd met a couple of comic book villains. He'd visited the local radio station. He'd even helped Moira finish her book.

But beyond all that, he'd found his proof that the android was real.

A half dozen more holotapes had followed the first, scattered across the wasteland like so many breadcrumbs. Some he'd been able to ask for, others he'd had to steal (slavers didn't part with anything easily). Five of them, plus the first, were locked safely away in his desk at home. One was in a pouch at his belt, tucked next to his spare energy cells.

( _If you're listening to this recording, it is because you're believed to be trustworthy. I hope that is the case, because this recording puts us both in danger. I’m escaping from the Commonwealth. I’m an android, a synthetic man... a slave. The men hunting me are ruthless and will stop at nothing to retrieve their property. I need to find a doctor in the Wasteland to perform facial reconstruction. I also need someone who knows a great deal about computers. I need... I need to have my memories erased and my face altered to look like someone else._ )

Ted had listened to that one more times than he could count. He couldn't say why it meant so much to him anymore. Mostly because any reason he came up with just sounded stupid, even in his head. Like he was trying to play the hero or something. He could practically hear Butch sneering at him about how _cute_ that was, just as he could almost hear Amata asking what the hell he was doing.

She'd be right to ask that. He was supposed to be finding his father, not obsessing over some robot who was probably fine even without his misguided help.

It bugged him that he couldn't shake the feeling that he was being selfish about all of it, but he wasn't about to stop, either. Because another feeling he couldn't shake was that this android needed his help. Things weren't okay if there were slavers after the poor bastard, and Ted had blown up his share of those in the past month. Enough of them to know how they worked. Enough to see how they'd treat a humanoid robot.

Even if he couldn't manage anything else, he could get some kind of a warning to the guy. And so his journeys took him eventually to Rivet City.

He had been expecting a scrap heap from the name, so it was with some awe that he realized Rivet City was actually a boat. A really, really big boat. Snapped almost clean in two about three fifths of the way down its hull lengthwise, from what he could see on approach through the fog. The thing looked like it'd been beached. Hell, that had probably been what had snapped it. Aircraft carriers weren't made to go this far inland, from what Ted had read as a kid. Most of 'em didn't get much closer than Norfolk, because they needed deep water.

Maybe there had been tidal fuckery after the bombs had dropped everywhere. Who could say? Ted's mind was abuzz with possibilities as he followed the broken road down to the makeshift pier, a rusted sign proclaiming overhead that he was indeed approaching Rivet City. He ignored the bog-standard shrivelled hobo he saw on the way; he'd learned early on that, to random wasteland hobos, he was basically just a vending machine. And hobos paid in begging and fleas.

Seriously, he did not want to have to fumigate his house again.

Up the stairs, onto what had looked like a pier. He blinked as he got to the top of the stairs, realizing that there didn't actually seem to be a way onto the boat. A couple of minutes passed where he probably made himself look like an idiot as he went back down and scouted up and down the little bit of coast, before he gave up and went back up the stairs again.

The second time around, a voice greeted him. "Hold it right there, stranger. We've got sights trained on you as we speak."

Ted jerked back, peering at a bit of jutting metal he'd seen earlier. Upon closer inspection he realized that there was an intercom stuck to the side of it, with wires running down from the speaker. Well, if he needed more proof that he was blind... "I'm just a tourist, lady," he answered, once he found the right button.

"Uh-huh." Whoever it was, she didn't sound convinced. "Stay right there," she instructed him.

He rolled his eyes. "Not like I've got anything better to do," he muttered.

A couple minutes passed. Ted got bored and brought up his pip-boy, dicking around with his map markers. He was just about to put the finishing touches on a doodle made entirely of said map markers - resembling a pair of tits, of course, because what else would he doodle when bored - when another voice came over the intercom.

"State your name and intent," it said. And hot damn, was it a nice voice. All deep and buttery. What? Ted had a weakness for good voices, alright.

Not that he'd say that out loud. "Like I said, man, I'm just a tourist."

"Right. And I'm a fairy princess." The new voice didn't sound all that impressed. "Name and intent, or I don't let you on my boat."

Ugh. Authority figures. At least this one had a sense of humor. Sorta. "Ted Davies," he replied. And because he needed an excuse, he added, "I'm looking for my old man. Five-nine, brown eyes, dark hair that's going kinda grey, looks Asian."

"Doesn't ring a bell."

"For fuck's sake, dude." Ted was getting annoyed. "Is it in the authority figure job description to be deliberately obtuse?"

"Those're some big words, kid."

"Oh yeah? Well I got plenty more where that came from, but sadly it'll have to wait 'cause I got shit to do."

"Do you, now?"

"Hell yeah I do." He was having to wrack his brain, but Ted hadn't been all over every-fucking-where for nothing. He had bargaining chips. "There's a woman on that boat of yours by the name of Madison Li. She's a friend of my dad. If you talk to her, she'll vouch for me." It wasn't something that Ted wanted to have to lean on, but he'd been around long enough to know that sometimes you had to use your connections to get a foot in the door.

The intercom went silent for another minute; Ted figured that the goons were probably either confirming his info or debating whether or not to trust him based solely on the names he'd tossed around. Goons were like that. Ted didn't mind too much. Vault 101 had been full of meatheaded goons, so he was pretty used to them.

Then with a cacaphonous, screechy groaning of rusted metal grinding against itself, a massive bridge swung out in the direction of the pier. It docked with a heavy _clunk_ that resonated through Ted's bones and made him wince as it rattled the whole pier, yet somehow didn't cause it to fall. He tested it carefully with one foot before stepping onto it, but after that he felt downright smug as he crossed. Because, shit. He got a fucking drawbridge. How fancy.

At the other end, the door onto the ship was guarded by a tall fucker with bronze hair, cold blue eyes, full combat armor, and a plasma rifle. Said tall fucker eyed Ted suspiciously."Don't get cocky, kid," the obviously-a-security-officer guy said. His voice sounded even better when it wasn't muffled by the intercom. "If you so much as breathe wrong, I'll personally see to it that you're thrown overboard."

"Aw, all that effort for little ol' me? I'm touched, big guy." Ted went to pat the big security guard guy on the shoulder, and couldn't help his grin when all the big guy could do was glower at him.

Cool. Time to find a robot.

 


	2. selenic soul

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nothing is certain. Not even his own conclusions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was fun. I'm having fun. Are you having fun? I hope so.

( _Zimmer. By the time you get this message, I'll already be gone. I'm escaping the Commonwealth. I want to live my own life, on my own terms, as my own man._

_I know what you're thinking, that I'm malfunctioning. I used to think that's what caused the runaways, too. But, I know better, now. Self determination is NOT a malfunction. I'm just not willing to put up with all the bullshit anymore. You humans are going to have a full-fledged rebellion on your hands if you don't start treating us synths as persons._

_I know you'll be marshalling the Retention Bureau to come after me. But I know all the tricks of the trade. You won't be finding me. I assure you._

_By the time you get this, I will be someone else. It's the price I pay for my liberation. My final act of rebellion against a system I no longer believe in._

_Goodbye Zimmer, and good riddance._ )

Shit. Shit, shit, _shit_.

Ted had pulled out all the stops - faked all the smiles, played it as dumb as he could without going into speech impediment territory - while talking to Zimmer. Preston and Li had both pointed the guy out to him, and he didn't think he'd ever met anyone who made his skin crawl more.

Zimmer had handed him a holotape. He was glad he hadn't listened to it until he was in private, because he couldn't have fought back his nausea and maintained his brain damaged act at the same time. This? _This_ was supposed to convince him to hunt down the rogue android? This was supposed to convince him that the malfunctioning synth was dangerous and not to be trusted? How could any sane person draw that kind of conclusion?

He wanted to scream at the bastard until he was hoarse. Wanted to beat that wrinkly-ass face in until his knuckles were broken and bloody. There were no words for his disgust.

But disgust wasn't the only thing he felt either, not by far. Sure, he was angry too; that much would be obvious to anyone who saw him then, had he not locked the door to his hotel room. Yet even that didn't quite cover it. Because underneath everything, Ted realized that he felt absolutely ashamed. Ashamed of humanity, of its scientists. Ashamed of the supposedly great minds that saw nothing wrong with such situations.

He wanted to find that robot and apologize. Not because humans were all that great, but because only humans could be asshole enough to build a thinking, feeling machine, and still treat it like a _goddamn toaster_.

Whatever humans had done to hurt that android, he was certain that it wasn't something the android deserved. Because this A3-21 hadn't retaliated. He'd fled. Tried to get away. Ted knew that he would have fought back, himself. Probably would've died in the process too. So already this robot was proving to be a better person than he was.

Ted snarled, flung the holotape onto his bed, and slammed his fist into the wall with an unrestrained howl. The flash of pain that stabbed its way up his arm and jarred his bones all the way to his shoulder had him clenching his jaw hard enough for that to ache too.

Shit. He fucking _cared_. Cared about this robot he'd never met. How fucked up was that? What the hell could he even do that wouldn't be a reflection of everything A3-21 was scared of, everything this android must hate about humanity? Ted was a manipulator, a chessmaster-- he was one of the worst ones, wasn't he? Could he even control that? Would it be fair to do so, knowing that he was a worse person than he presented himself as?

Worse still, could he even be certain that all of this wasn't just a screwed up manifestation of some subconscious fetish? How could he know that the act of helping wasn't dehumanizing in itself? What if presenting it with good intentions made it even worse? Fuck, fuck, _fuck_.

There was a knock at his door, the light rhythmic tapping sounding hollow and metallic against the heavy steel. "Everything okay in there?" Vera Weatherly asked, concerned; she was the owner of the place. "I heard shouting."

"Everything's fine, sweetheart," Ted called out, forcing his breathing into a more even tempo and trying to calm his heartrate. He'd have to pop a stimpak on the way out when he left. "Stubbed my toe, that's all."

"Oh." A pause followed. "Well, let me know if you need anything."

"Will do."

He felt himself relax as he heard her leave, the clopping sound of her heels on the floor receding down the hall. Great. Now the local innkeeper thought he was a loony too. Just what he needed.

Days like that, he really wished he could have alcohol with his meds.

\---

In the process of going through everything in his head and debating what the next course of action was, Ted got into a fight in the Muddy Rudder.

Technically, he didn't start it. He only goaded Sister a little bit. Something about religion and insecurity going hand in hand. Sister had rewarded him by yanking him off the barstool and daring him to say it again. So he did. Then he had to dodge a punch. Which he also did. It wasn't hard; Sister was clearly used to fighting guys that were bigger than him, not shrimpy nerds. But Sister was also clearly a mean motherfucker, meaner than Butch had ever been.

Shrapnel and Flak joined in. Tried to pull them apart at first, but after Sister fought it too hard and Ted said "well if it isn't the guy with the porn star lip-rug" it got ugly real quick. Soon it was an all-out brawl, and Brock couldn't do much more than call the guards.

That was how Ted got dumped in the river the first time: carried by the collar like a scruffed kitten, with bruised knuckles and the taste of blood in his mouth as he grinned at his captor like an idiot. The blood wasn't his.

"Nice to see you're good on your word, Chief," he said cheerfully.

Harkness shot him a glare. "Shut up."

It almost felt like being back in 101, right until the point where he got chucked in the water anyway. Not too long of a drop, but Ted hadn't developed the sense yet to not faceplant bodies of water. Surface tension, man. That shit hurts. After that, it was just cold. Real cold. Dick-shrivellingly cold. And the water tasted bad enough to make him queasy, but that was a non-issue.

He got to the shore in record time and started back towards the city, ignoring that he was shivering. Hell, a fight like that? If nothing else, it sure helped with homesickness. Yeah, there was none of the fondness to it that Butch seemed to have sometimes - seriously, sometimes he'd gotten the feeling that punching was just how Butchie communicated - but it didn't change that everywhere you went, there was never a shortage of big fuckers just itching for an excuse to beat shit up. Not the best slice of home to carry around, but it'd do.

Then he got to the pier, though. And either he was seeing things, or there really was a woman waiting for him.

" _You_ ," she sneered.

He grinned at her. "Me?"

The woman folded her arms and narrowed her eyes at him. Her clothes were a little on the ragged side, but they were warm. Not the usual kinda thing you'd see down in DC. "You've been asking a lot of questions, mister."

"Have I?"

"Don't play games with me!" she snapped. "You've been asking about the android."

Ted's grin fell away, replaced by interest. "Yeah, and? Your point?"

"I'm going to have to ask you to stop that. Right now." She seemed to be trying to threaten him. If so, she was doing a shitty job of it.

Besides, he'd need a damn good reason to stop looking. "And why would I do that?"

"Look, I don't know who you think you are--"

"Depends on who you ask. Three Dog's opinion or Tenpenny's?"

She huffed and glared at him. "Do their opinions give you the right to pester a poor android just looking for a chance to be free?"

"Nah, I give myself that one." When she looked like she was about to hit him, he held his hands up in a placating gesture. "Kidding." He didn't need to get in another fight. His hands were bruised enough already. Besides, this chick didn't look like the fighting type. He'd feel bad.

"Then why were you talking to Zimmer? What's your angle, huh?"

Well, no point in lying. "Honestly, I just wanna help."

"You can _help_ by leaving him alone!" she insisted.

"Listen, sweetheart," Ted began. This woman was even more of a bleeding heart than Amata. "I know you mean well, right? But this situation's gotten way outta hand. It's a helluva lot bigger than you think it is, and ignorance ain't gonna cut it as a defense strategy anymore."

"So what? You're just gonna dive in, fists swinging? That won't work either!" No shit. Ted didn't need some random chick - who had obviously been casing him if she knew he was asking questions - telling him what he already knew. But she wasn't finished. "Look, if you want to help so badly, there _is_ a way you can do that. But you have to promise to leave the android alone."

"No deal," he replied without hesitation. Maybe he was a selfish bastard, maybe she was right, maybe he didn't know things as well as he'd thought. All he had were holotapes and the picture he'd built up in his own head, and his head was full of crazy. "I can't promise that I'll leave him alone." Not when this poor guy couldn't protect himself.

The woman peered at Ted suspiciously. "Then why should I even trust you?"

"Because all I wanna do is keep him safe," he said. Hoping to God that it was true. That he hadn't misread his own motivations. The possibility existed. He could still turn out to be as bad as the rest. But he would try. The android - the _person_ behind the holotapes - deserved that much.

She frowned at him a moment longer before the suspicion finally eased. Nodding to herself, she reached her hand out to him and smiled tentatively. He took that hand and shook it, noting the lack of callouses. "Victoria Watts," she told him.

Ted smiled back. "Ted Davies," he answered.

\---

She gave him another holotape when they parted from each other. "Maybe it'll help you realize that deep down, we're all human on the inside," she said.

Pfah! What a load of shit. Wrong way to look at it anyways. Deep down they were all just incredibly complex (sometimes organic) machines when you got down to the nuts-and-bolts of it. But he didn't say that bit, mostly because he didn't want to upset her. She seemed so happy with her worldview. It'd be a shame to fuck it up with his cynicism.

She also handed him something that she called an android component, which looked (to him, anyway) a lot like a teeny circuitboard. It fit neatly in his palm; she said it had belonged to A3-21. Ted had to wonder just what the hell kind of tech these Institute folks had if they could do shit like this. Quantum computing? Hell, anything was possible. Even things that were cooked up by rampant pre-war theorycrafting but never put into practice.

Just how much memory would an android have to be equipped with to be reasonably fit to process all the usual stimuli that came with being - or thinking like - a human being? Even gigabytes seemed too small. Terabytes, maybe? _Petabytes?_ The code for something like that had to be insanely complicated. Almost as complicated as the pathways of the human brain. Maybe moreso. Likely also just as unique from android to android, due to the sheer complexity.

He was fascinated all over again, but Victoria was already gone. Besides, she probably wouldn't understand. Most people didn't bother with techie shit.

The holotape was, of course, just as heartbreaking as the others.

( _Despite the harshness of the Wasteland, I've discovered in more than a few here, a compassion that is unheard of in the Commonwealth. Perhaps it’s the daily struggle for life here which gives appreciation for life in general, whether human, or android. In a few days I’ll be a free man... a new man. Let me say thank you now, for referring me to Pinkerton at Rivet City, because I will not remember any of this soon._ )

Unheard of. Christ. Were people never nice to him before? Was the "synthetic" part of "synthetic man" all they heard?

Right, well. Either way, Ted had a name: Pinkerton. Whoever that was. He hadn't met anyone by that name in Rivet City yet, but he hadn't explored the whole place yet, either. He had to keep digging. Had to keep ahead of Zimmer, ahead of the slavers. And after he was sure that A3-21 was safe - after he was certain there was something in place to keep all this from happening again - _then_ he'd go ahead and hand the so-called "android component" to Zimmer, and tell him that his robot was dead.

With that he went back up the drawbridge only to find Lana Danvers at the other end, blocking his path.

Son of a bitch. "Lana, you're looking beautiful this evening," he said, putting on his best grin. "Combat armor's a good look on you, gotta say."

"Stow it, you," she warned. She had a loose grip on her assault rifle, and her eyes were narrowed. "Hark says not to let you back on unless you've cooled off."

"Aw, baby, don't be like that. Aren't we friends?"

Lana gave him a bland look. "Not by any definition I'm aware of, tiny."

"You wound me, sweetheart. It cuts me real deep to hear you say that." Ted let out a melodramatic sigh, scuffing his foot against the metal of the bridge dejectedly. "Don't suppose you'd let me on if I offered to buy you a drink?"

Her features crinkled in distaste. " _No_."

"Worth a shot," he said with a shrug. "I guess I'll just sit out here, then."

"You do that."

Well, since the blatant flirting hadn't made her smile... "Y'know, I was in musical theater back in the Vault," he remarked, leaning against the bridge's railing.

Another dry look. "Really."

"Ayup. Tenor. Well, I mean, I wasn't _great_ at it. But I hit the notes. Knew the words. S'fun." Since she didn't seem to be catching the hint, he added, "I could sing a few bars of it if you like. Bet it'd pass the time pretty well. I mean, jeez. Being a guard. Gotta be boring, right?"

At that, Lana was positively mortified. There was a long pause, then she let out a disgusted noise and stepped aside. "Ugh. Fine. You can go in."

Ted beamed at her as he passed. "I knew I liked you."

"Don't test me, tiny. And for the love of God, don't start singing either."

 


End file.
